IRAQI police and American forces yesterday arrested at least three men in connection with the abduction and murder of Margaret Hassan, the British aid worker kidnapped last October and shot dead by terrorists on film.

A number of the men were said to have confessed to her murder, but the British embassy in Baghdad could not confirm this.

The arrests followed a dawn swoop on terrorist hide outs in the Al-Jaara area south of Baghdad. Police found a suitcase filled with women’s clothes and an identity card believed to belong to Mrs Hassan, 59, the head of CARE International’s Baghdad operations.

News of the arrests focused renewed attention on kidnapping in Iraq and came as a video was released purporting to show an Australian hostage pleading for his life.

Responsibility for the murder of Mrs Hassan and another British hostage, Kenneth Bigley, last year was claimed by the group led by Iraq’s most-wanted militant, the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The terrorist, who has a $25 million price on his head, is said to have narrowly escaped capture in February.

Two of his closest aides were captured in that incident and security forces have turned up the heat in their efforts to find him since, but the intensity of recent attacks in the country has emphasised the difficulties in tracking him down.

British police were carrying out investigations at the scene of yesterday’s raid near Madain, a lawless town southeast of Baghdad where scores of Iraqis have disappeared and dozens of bodies have been dumped in the River Tigris.

“We believe this is the first evidence that’s been found regarding her (Mrs Hassan) since her death,” said Martin Cronin, first secretary at the British Embassy in in Baghdad.

“There is reasonable evidence to believe that the items were Hassan’s. But until our police have finished their investigation we cannot say definitively.”

Mrs Hassan was kidnapped while driving near CARE’s offices in Baghdad last October, and was later filmed weeping as she pleaded for her life. A month later, another film was given to Al-Jazeera television showing a blindfolded woman, believed to be Mrs Hassan, being shot through the back of the head by a masked gunman.

Mrs Hassan had worked for more than three decades in Iraq, helping the sick and disabled.

Mr Bigley, kidnapped with two other American contractors in September, was beheaded 11 days before Mrs Hassan’s disappearance. Scotland Yard detectives have recently visited Baghdad again with DNA samples taken from Mr Bigley’s 87-year-old mother, Lil, though his family have not been told what they were trying to match these results with.

A senior Yard spokesman said “We have certainly not given up on finding those responsible for these unspeakable acts, and we are still following various leads which we hope will lead to the recovery of their bodies”.

In the kidnappers’ video released yesterday, a man sitting between two masked men armed with assault rifles, identifies himself as Douglas Wood, 63, an Australian living in California and married to an American. He pleads for the US, Australian and British authorities to withdraw from Iraq.

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